Nucleon-Nucleon Interactions on the Lattice

TL;DR

This paper investigates nucleon-nucleon interactions in lattice QCD, revealing unphysical long-distance behavior due to one-meson exchange, which impacts how nuclear properties are derived from simulations.

Contribution

It demonstrates the unphysical exponential decay of the potential in quenched and partially-quenched QCD, contrasting with expected Yukawa behavior, highlighting limitations in current lattice approaches.

Findings

Long-distance potential falls off exponentially, not Yukawa.

Unphysical components influence nuclear property extraction.

Implications for future lattice QCD simulations.

Abstract

We consider the nucleon-nucleon potential in quenched and partially-quenched QCD. The leading one-meson exchange contribution to the potential is found to fall off exponentially at long-distances, in contrast with the Yukawa-type behaviour found in QCD. This unphysical component of the two-nucleon potential has important implications for the extraction of nuclear properties from lattice simulations.